


( there are t e n things you need to know )

by pentaghastly



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, M/M, Stream of Consciousness, and a "fuck you" to Alexander LOL, hamilton Knows Things but he's also an Idiot, idk why i wrote this???, my writing style gets weirder and weirder by the day i swear, the ham/laur is brief & vague but there, this fic is basically a love letter to Eliza and Angelica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:51:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7688743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are a great many things that Alexander Hamilton knows.</p><p>(An obvious statement, but one he thinks important to make abundantly clear. Let it never once be said, throughout any of his foolishness, any of his mistakes, any of his seemingly thoughtless actions, that he didn’t <em>know</em> precisely what it was that he was doing.)</p><p>One: he loves Angelica first, and he marries her sister anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	( there are t e n things you need to know )

There are a great many things that Alexander Hamilton knows.

(An obvious statement, but one he thinks important to make abundantly clear. Let it never once be said, throughout any of his foolishness, any of his mistakes, any of his seemingly thoughtless actions, that he didn’t _know_ precisely what it was that he was doing.)

One: he loves Angelica first, and he marries her sister anyways.

Not that he doesn’t love Eliza - sweet, sweet Eliza, his Betsy, with the petal-softness of her kiss and her smiles sweet as the Caribbean sun, yes, Alex thinks, maybe he’s got a greedy heart and his hands are always hungry for more, but he can at least rest easy in the thought that he has not married a woman that he doesn’t love. He just happens to love her sister (love her first, love her hungrier) in a different way that he does his wife. He’s not sure if that makes things better, or worse.

Likely, he thinks, worse.

One: he loves Angelica first. Washington invites him to this fancy government fundraiser and Alex thinks that this party feels suspiciously like the beginning of the life he always knew he was meant to have all along. He wears a suit that he absolutely did not buy at a second-hand shop and his shoes did not belong to his father, they’re _his_ , and his tie is crisp and straight and he looks at himself in the mirror and things _yes, this is the beginning_.

Burr claps him on the back, congratulates him on the promotion, and it feels real but it feels sour, too - Alex pushes that aside for a later date. Lafayette pulls a flask out of his velvet blue blazer and they pass it around in a circle, the two of them and Herc and John, and it almost feels like being in high school (not that he went to high school, but it feels like how the movies show it, and he thinks that’s a good thing). Burr joins them and there’s some talk of _sisters_ and _money_ and really, that’s all it takes to fully steal his attention.

Then she walks into the room in a light pink dress and she smiles and god, the rest of him is stolen, too.

,,,

Two: the conversation goes something like this:

Laff is saying something in her ear; Alex interrupts because he’s Alexander fucking Hamilton and tonight he feels like he’s the top of the world, so why _shouldn’t_ he? It helps that his friend, ever the flirt, is married anyways, and a few more drinks will be all it takes for the Frenchman to forgive him for his rudeness entirely.

If she’s taken aback, she doesn’t show it. Instead she raises an eyebrow in the way that looks as though it must have taken years of practice but is effortless, still, and she says, “Can I help you?”

And he replies, “No,” because it’s the truth.

(The only person who can help him is himself. It didn’t take long for Alexander to learn such a lesson.)

And then he says, “It’s just that I noticed you when you entered the room, you see, and then I couldn’t _stop_ noticing you,” which isn’t very smooth at all, so instead of stopping while he’s ahead he keeps going. “There’s something endlessly captivating, striking, about a woman who has never been satisfied.”

His words can be taken an infinite number of ways, and it’s with a small hitch of breath (and an amused twinkle in charcoal eyes) that Alex realizes she has taken them the _wrong_ one. “I’m certain that I don’t know what you mean. You forget yourself,” and Alex wants to say: _yes. Yes, don’t you see, you’ve made me forget everything that there is in this world except for you._

He doesn’t.

Instead he steadies himself while hardly skipping a beat, more confidence in his tone, more clarity in his words. “What I mean to say is - we’re the same. I’ve never been satisfied.” And she understands now, and the fire in her eyes is back; yes, they’re the same, they always want _more_. And her voice is dropping and her lips are curling upwards and she says, “is that right?”, and all he can manage to do is repeat himself.

“My name is Angelica Schuyler,” she says, and when she says her name it sounds like music.

,,,

Three: he would rather die than hurt his wife.

If there is such thing as goodness incarnate then it is Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, Eliza who weaves daisies though the ink black braid that cascades down her spine like a waterfall, Eliza who kisses him sweetly every time she enters a room and again every time she leaves, Eliza who slips notes into his pockets when he leaves for work in the morning. Eliza, Eliza, _Eliza_. He wakes up each morning and goes to bed each night thinking of her.

Cruel, then, that it isn’t enough.

Maybe it’s because there are still words unsaid; maybe it’s because Angelica touches his arm to brush past him in the kitchen and it _lingers_ long after her grip is gone, maybe it’s because of the words she spoke in her toast at the wedding: _”May you always be satisfied,”_ as if she was staring directly into his soul (she probably was).

Maybe it’s because of the things Eliza tells him after she and her sister spend hours on the phone - Angelica and John are fighting again, Angelica wants John to go see a counsellor, Angelica and John don’t sleep in the same bed anymore.

She doesn’t speak about her marriage as candidly with Alexander as she does with Betsy. He wonders if it’s because she thinks of their conversations as a sort of escape, or if it’s because she understands that the second she does, she might have to admit just what the genuine cause is of it’s ever-increasing dissolution. It’s not for Angelica’s benefit, Alex knows, and not even for his own.

Four: Angelica would rather die than hurt her sister.

,,,

Five: he loved Angelica first, but he didn’t love Angelica _first_.

(Warm mouths and sweaty hands and nervous laughter - there’s no liquor on their breath this time, they don’t get to pass it off as a drunken mistake, they don’t _want_ to, he memorizes the number of freckles that decorate his back, draws lines between them to turn them into constellations, kisses the imaginary paths his fingertips leave behind. 

This is what happiness tastes like. It lingers on his lips long after he’s gone.)

They never talk about it. He’s relieved.

,,,

Six: he doesn’t deserve Eliza.

In his opinion, and the opinion of anyone who has ever crossed her path, _no one_ deserves Eliza. Her tender hands and gentle heart weren’t made for anyone on this earth; Alex thinks that if the skies were to be split open right now it would be his wife who was declared the most holy, his wife who could heal a broken, bloodied soul with a tender smile and a sweet kiss.

And she holds hers directly in the palms of her hands, a broken bird, a fragile, fluttering thing, and she seems to find it the most beautiful thing and God, he loves her for it. Not enough, he thinks, because if Alex loved her enough then he wouldn’t be with her, wouldn’t be within a ten foot radius of her - but he loves her enough to promise her (promise himself) that he’ll do his best, that he’ll try and ignore the yearning in his gut, the animal instinct driving him to search for the things he doesn’t have.

He has Eliza.

It’s enough, it’s enough, it’s _enough_.

(And maybe, he thinks, if he keeps repeating it to himself, it might eventually become the truth.)

,,,

Seven: if he squints, if he pretends, in the pitch darkness Maria Reynolds could almost be mistaken for someone else.

He tugs his hand through a mass of dark curls, and it’s not quite as soft, and it’s a little bit longer, but he thinks, _yes_ , this is close, this could almost be real.

She presses her body against his, and she’s a little bit shorter and a little bit softer but there’s an unmistakable fire in her eyes that cuts through the shadows, a spark, a hunger, and Alex thinks _yes_ , he can make this work, he can pretend for a little while longer.

Later, the next morning, she sends him a picture and her face is cut off by the camera but he sees a dark expanse of skin and he thinks _”Angelica would never do this”_ and he thinks _”what Angelica would or wouldn’t do doesn’t matter, can’t matter, you’re not married to her”_ and he thinks _”you’re not married to Maria, either.”_

If Alex can say one thing for himself, it’s that he never sends her any pictures back.

Eight: Maria Reynolds is not Angelica.

She’s a poor, poor substitute, but Alex isn’t even certain that’s what she’s _meant_ to be, either - she’s a last-ditch effort, a desperate attempt to fill a hole that’s been there for far too long, and he knows that he’s hurting his wife and he knows that he’s always going to be craving more than what he has and he’s never going to be satisfied and it’s never going to work, he knows, and that’s just the very thing about it all, isn’t it?

Nine: no matter what he does, it’s never going to work.

,,,

She sits across from him in his study, posture stiff, expression cold, eyes flickering back and forth between the tumbler in her hand and the door as if plotting an escape route, but even still she is _there_ , present, real. Even still, he thinks there is a chance that he may not have lost everything.

He deserves to lose everything.

His wife is in the other room, the room Angelica just left, and he wonders if she came to sit with him of her own volition or because Eliza told her to, because Eliza has the children and her parents and the world on her side and Alexander has a glass of scotch and the taste of bile in his throat and Alex knows that this is the fate he has written for himself - he knows a great many things, and when he published those papers he was prepared for the outcome.

(Have you ever seen a man ruin his own life?)

They don’t speak, don’t attempt to fill the stifling air with petty arguments or biting words or desperate apologizes - the only thing that speaking will serve to do is send them in circles, dogs chasing their own tales, too obsessed with cause and blame and guilt to focus on redemption. 

And he wonders, as she sips on her drink, if there’s a part of Angelica that feels wronged, too. He wonders if there’s a part of her that had heard the news and been _wounded_ , wounded for her sister and wounded that he had broken his marriage vows and it had not been with her, wounded that his touch never lingered longer than necessary when she asked him to do the clasp on her necklace, wounded with herself that she would even consider such a possibility. He wonders, but Alex doesn’t ask - he knows better than that.

He wonders if there’s a part of Angelica that feels guilty, if she saw the pictures of Maria Reynolds in the papers and thought, if only for a second, “ _in the dark, she could almost be me._ ”

Ten: there are a great many things Alexander knows nothing of at all.

**Author's Note:**

> the first ham thing i've ever written - comments/kudos would be much appreciated <3


End file.
